Tag: psychology
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #8 — Dopamine Makes You Addicted To Seeking Information
Do you ever feel like you are addicted to email or twitter or texting? Do you find it impossible to ignore your email if you see that there are messages in your inbox? Have you ever gone to Google to look up some information and 30 minutes later you realize that you’ve been reading and…
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7 Strategies to Replace Multi-Tasking
In a previous blog I talked about the research that shows that multi-tasking is not effective. (See 100 Things You Should Know About People: #7 — People Can’t Multi-Task) So if multi-tasking is not effective what should you do? How do you effectively cope with all the input and distractions you have in your life,…
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100 Things You Should Know About People: #7 — You Actually Can't Multi-Task
I know it’s popular to think that you are multi-tasking, but the research is clear that people actually can’t multi-task, with one specific exception. One thing at a time — For many years the psychology research has shown that people can only attend to one task at a time. Let me be even more specific.…
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100 things You Should Know About People: #6 — You Reconstruct Your Memories
Try this task — Think back to a particular event that happened at least 5 years ago. Maybe it was a wedding, or a family gathering, or a dinner you went to with friends, or a vacation. Pick one for our purposes here, and remember the event. Remember the people, and where you were and…
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100 Things You Should Know about People: #5 — You Make Most of Your Decisions Unconsciously
You are thinking of buying a TV. You do some research on what TV to buy and then you go online to purchase one. What factors are involved in this decision making process? It’s not what you think — I cover this topic in my book Neuro Web Design: What makes them click? You like…
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100 Things You Should Know about People: #4 — You Imagine Objects From Above and Tilted (The "Canonical Perspective")
Why you should believe the research in this blog post even though it’s from 1981 — Whenever I talk about “old” research some people start right away to dismiss it. It’s easy to think that research done in the 1990s or 1980s, or heavens! the 1970s! couldn’t hold any interest for us now. I heartily…
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100 Things You Should Know about People: #3 — You Can Only Remember 3 to 4 Things At A Time (The Magic Number 3 or 4)
7 + – 2??? 3 or 4??? Those of you who have been in the field of usability or user experience for a few years have probably heard the phrase “The Magic Number 7 Plus Or Minus 2”. This refers, actually, to what I would call an urban legend. Here’s the legend part: Legend: “A…
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100 Things You Should Know about People: #1– You Have "Inattention Blindness"
I’ve decided to start a series called 100 Things You Should Know about People. As in: 100 things you should know if you are going to design an effective and persuasive website, web application or software application. Or maybe just 100 things that everyone should know about humans! The order that I’ll present these 100…
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Watch Out For Spending More Because of Habit
When I go to fill up on gas I always use the middle grade of gas… (this is the principle of contrast, by the way… when faced with choices of varying prices many people will pick the price that is one down from the most expensive… but that is a sidebar… it’s not even what…
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5 Steps to More Creativity Using Brain Science
Want to be more creative? Whether you are an artist, writer, scientist, web designer, marketer, sales person or business executive, being more creative means you’ll come up with more and better ideas and have more fun while you are doing it. If you want to have more creative ideas you need to work with, not…
